Abstract:

To the extent that it satisfies children’s or adolescents’ compelling need to learn about themselves and others, children's literature can significantly inform the development of personal identity and the definition of life path choices. This principle, which features prominently in literary criticism and aesthetics, has recently become a focus of inquiry within general and educational psychology and neuroscience; studies in these fields have examined the benefits of exposure to both independent reading and reading aloud across a range of formal and informal life settings.

In light of this background, the aim of the pilot study presented here was to explore possible avenues of research in the field of teaching methodologies, starting from a broad understanding of reading as a deeply emotional experience and as a process of constructing and attributing meaning in which cognitive and emotional dimensions are inextricably intertwined. More specifically, the paper outlines the themes that emerged during an educational trajectory designed ad hoc to bring children into contact with literary texts in the context of an ongoing interactive and dialogic process.

The participants in the exploratory programme were 18 children aged 7- 8 years who were attending the third grade at a primary school within the “Mont Emilius 2” group of schools in the province of Aosta (Italy). The children took part in reading activities and subsequent group discussions moderated by the researcher. The program was implemented in January of the 2022/2023 school year and comprised five sessions totalling eight hours.

From a methodological perspective, discourse analysis was applied to the interactions between a teacher/moderator and a group of children, with a view to formulating hypotheses based on the interpretative categories emerging from the transcripts. We examine the exchanges in terms of the emergence, development, and content of core themes.

The transcribed discussions were coded and the following main categories were identified: "Recognition of emotions in the text" in terms of identification of the emotions of the story characters based on textual cues; "Emotions prompted by those identified in the text" in terms of accounts of thoughts or experiences prompted by the recognition of given emotions in the text; and "The emotions elicited by reading" in terms of the verbalization of emotions stemming from the experience of listening to and/or reading stories. The first two categories comprised several subcategories, including a larger number of primary emotions and a smaller number of secondary emotions, as well as observations about the relationship between emotions and their manifestations and expressions.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the main outcomes and the key insights arising from them, along with the limitations of the study and potential future lines of inquiry.

Keywords:

Reading, literature, emotion, classroom discourse.